Many of our villages have totally disappeared over the
years, whilst others have been ‘moved’ for a variety of reasons, leaving
several oddities :
Wharram Percy
It is believed that there are
more than 3,000 deserted medieval villages in England and the sites of many of
them have been destroyed by modern development. Wharram
Percy on the Yorkshire Wolds, 6 miles S.E of Malton on the B1248, is one of
the best preserved deserted villages in the country. From a reasonably prosperous village in the
14th century with two manors, this village declined through the next
150 years until it was finally deserted c1500.
The only remaining building of that time is the ruined church. The site is now in the care of English
Heritage.
Warram Percy
A village restored
The tiny village of Wycoller is situated in a lovely area of
Lancashire known as the Forest of Trawden and close to the West Yorkshire
border not far from Haworth of Bronte fame.
There has been a settlement there as far back as 1000BC. It was essentially an agricultural village
until the 18th century when the manufacture of woollen and worsted
on handlooms became the prominent industry.
In 1820 the population of Wycoller was 350 but the 35 dwellings soon
became deserted as people left to seek more lucrative employment in the mills
which had brought prosperity to nearby towns with the coming of the industrial
revolution.
Late in the 19th
century there was a proposal to flood the valley and Wycoller to create a new
reservoir and the village became totally derelict. Eventually the scheme was abandoned and in
1973, Lancashire County Council purchased the land which they declared a
conservation area, with 350 acres of the surrounding countryside being
designated a Country Park.
Now much of the village has been
restored. Once again the cottages are
inhabited and the community is thriving once again after more than 100 years.
Wycoller
A flooded village
During the drought of 1995,
another abandoned village was laid bare when the waters of Thruscross Reservoir in the
Yorkshire Dales near Harrogate in North Yorkshire, receded. The valley had been flooded in the 1970’s
by the Yorkshire Water Board to supply water to the nearby cities of West
Yorkshire. The village of West End at
one end of the valley, was totally engulfed in water and the buildings,
including the church, disappeared beneath.
It was said that the church tower could be seen from time to time over
the years as the water level lowered.
However in 1995 when the water receded completely from the village, just
heaps of stones which had been buildings, were revealed, although two small
bridges over a stream running through the village were more or less intact.
The Highland Clearances
The lonely tin church at Syre in
Sutherland is a stark reminder that throughout the 19th century,
landlords evicted Highland tenants from their crofts in order to replace them
with marginal smallholdings with extensive sheep farms attached. Their methods were very harsh often using violence
together with the burning of the houses.
Many thousands of these Highlander’s had no option but to emigrate, leading to the
depopulation of the Highlands. In 1886
following growing civil disobedience, the Napier Commission’s report resulted
in the passing of the Crofting Act, giving crofter’s security of tenure,
bringing the clearances to an end, but did nothing to restore land already
cleared. Whole villages were cleared in
this part of Sutherland leaving a bleak wilderness to the sheep.
Syre
Villages moved
In the 1770’s, the Earl of
Dorchester bought the village of Milton
Abbas in Dorset together with
the fine abbey which had suffered as a result of the Dissolution. With the exception of the Abbey church and
nearby St Catherine’s chapel, the Earl demolished the lot and built himself a
very fine house and park. However, the Earl did also rebuild the village
just one mile away and this ‘model village’ of thatched roofed cottages is
still a sight to behold. The Earl’s
house is now a public school and the fine grounds remain. A very unusual grass staircase still gives access to St Catherine’s chapel, which,
together with the Abbey church is open
to the public.
Early in the 19th
century, the 6th Duke of Devonshire made various alterations to his
home, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. At
that time he decided that the village of Edensor,
close to his fine house, was any eyesore and razed it to the ground.
He
then had the village rebuilt away from the house, leaving his fine estate
uncluttered by houses.
His new ‘model village’ was built
just one mile away and no two buildings are the same. At the entrance to the village is a lodge
which looks like a small fort, whilst
in a corner stands a mock Swiss chalet in brown stone. Other houses have Tudor chimneys, Italian
style windows, with a jumble of gables , porches and odd windows.
Edensor
A change of
county
In 1974 the tiny village of Diggle,
situated on the western slopes of the Pennines, was ‘moved,’ as a
result of local government re-organisation in that year, from Yorkshire into a
new county – Greater Manchester Along
with six other villages which make up the district of Saddleworth, those
Yorkshire folk of Diggle found to their dismay that their sons would no longer
be eligible to play cricket for
Yorkshire! Having to play for Lancashire
was just not cricket and such was the public outcry that Saddleworth achieved a
very special distinction – not only would it be able to retain the white rose,
but also their sons would remain eligible to play for Yorkshire.
Diggle
Arkwright Town
Arkwright Town near Chesterfield in Derbyshire was for
many years a coal mining village with its close knit community of terraced
houses, until mining privatisation in the 1990’s when the local pit closed down. To add insult to injury it was subsequently
found that methane gas was seeping from the old workings into the houses and
the village had to be abandoned. The
village was rescued by a company who wished to opencast mine the area and in
1995 all 200 families were given new homes in a new purpose built village close
by.
The town that
never was
In the late 1880’s a company was
formed to develop the settlement of Peak a
new village to be situated on the cliff top between Whitby and
Scarborough. The name was changed to Ravenscar
and about 300 people were employed to build roads, drains and so on
in readiness for the buildings to be constructed to cater for the influx of
people which it was anticipated the development would attract. Potential purchasers were tempted to attend
property auctions by the provision of cheap rail transport from Leeds and
Bradford, but they were not a success and the company collapsed. Today all that remains of the grand plan are
some roads now reduced to green tracks between fields, a few Victorian town houses and a map!
Ravenscar
Lidice
Many atrocities were committed
during the Second World War, non more atrocious than that at Lidice in what is now the Czech Republic. On 10th June 1942, following the
assassination of Nazi chief, Reinhard Heydrich,
the village of Lidice was razed to the ground and erased from the map,
after all the men had been shot and the women and children removed.
After the war the village was
rebuilt nearby and the old site was preserved as a lasting memorial.
Oradour-sur-Glane
On 8th June 1944
French resistance fighters blew up a railway bridge some 10 kilometres from the
little village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France, in order to delay German troop
movement which was converging on the Normandy front. Two days later at 2.0pm troops belonging to
S.S Der Fuhrer Regiment surrounded Oradour and ordered all the villagers to
congregate outside. The women and
children were put into the church, whilst all the men were shot. Not satisfied with this barbarity, the
women and children were also shot, the youngest being an 8 days old child. A total of 642 people were killed. The village was then set on fire.
After the war a new village was
built nearby and the old site was preserved as a lasting memorial.
Oradour - sur - Glane
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